


maybe then you'd understand

by lopanic



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Flynn is off doing Flynn things, I don't know how html works, M/M, Post-Episode: s02e08 And the Point of Salvation, and this is to the canon timeline what the so called War Doctor is to Doctor Who continuity, because I'm a fucking Luddite, i.e. useless contradictory and irrelevant, set in a nebulous time after Happily Ever Afters and before the season 2 finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 02:03:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13424370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lopanic/pseuds/lopanic
Summary: Ezekiel Jones is not a liar. He doesn't have to be when he can manipulate the truth into whatever he wants it to be.When he told everybody he didn't remember the video game, that wasthetruth.Two months later, it's justatruth. And it's getting less true by the day.In the absence of therealplayer, Ezekiel has to take on the nightmares.





	maybe then you'd understand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SnorkleShit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnorkleShit/gifts).



> If I could live a thousand times  
> If I could make a thousand tries  
> Oh maybe then I'd get it right.  
> The more I see, the more I know  
> That everyone just wants a show,  
> No, we don't want to see the truth -- Imagine Dragons, Thief. (also known as the most Ezekiel song on this good earth, and you can see an awesome video here to demonstrate)  
> *~*  
> (the above notes were written shortly after that video was made. Before snorkleshit’s birthday… in 2016. Yes, I’m a sham and a shame unto my family, and this has been sitting in my drafts with bits grafted on every now and then for two years. Which I’m happy to blame the jarring style upon, but the main point is. Happy birthday, Kira, I’m sorry it took so long and I’m really sorry that we don’t get to talk more often. Timezones and groupchats that are four times larger than the last time I knew everyone in it, but still no excuse. Hope you haven’t gone off this prompt since 2016!)  
> ((unbeta’d because you’re the one who offered and that’s just not right. Rushed and full of errors because it’s 3:08 in Scotland and that means it’s 19:08 where you are and it is on time for your birthday god damnit. Happy birthday nevertheless.))  
> EDIT: god fucking bless outruneverything for fixing my formatting. the real mvp. her medal is in the post.  
> *~*

**maybe then you'd understand**  
_________________________

The thing is, Ezekiel Jones is not a liar. He doesn't exactly come out and tell complete falsehoods: while his sarcasm is a thing to behold, his ready excuses are not so readily believed, and his improv is admittedly pretty terrible. It's much easier to just -- bend the truth a little. Reshape it, forge it into something with fewer parts and a more convenient shape. Like clay. Nobody has to know what it was before, as long as it gets the job done as it is. 

The other thing is, the truth isn't always the truth. Sometimes it's just _a_ truth, and there's no real way to distinguish it from the truth because there's lots of possible truths and you can only pick out one to call the main truth. Doesn't stop the other truths from existing though. 

He's rambling. Back to the point. The point is. When he told them he didn't remember the video game, that was _the_ truth. 

Two months later, it's just _a_ truth. And it's getting less true by the day. 

*~* 

The bad dreams are nothing new at first. He's had problems with nightmares since before he was old enough to pick a padlock (the generally accepted age in his household being around five years old) and he's been dealing with them for just as long. Simple stuff; he can breeze into the Annex and talk about the wild night he had last night, full of insinuations and implication and innuendo, and they'll roll their eyes and press no further. Unless he's particularly unlucky, and Ezekiel Jones is rarely unlucky.

Like a jumpscare, Baird pops up in the corridor dead ahead of him. "Jones, you don't look so good."

Then again, there _was_ that leprechaun he pissed off last week. Damn. 

"I'm shocked, and appalled at this slander, Baird, I really am. I always look good,” he quips with a charming grin. Baird, who wouldn't be charmed by anything short of a horde of cherubs descending from on high to stick her with a dozen quivers full of charm spells, looks entirely unimpressed. 

"Right. And the dark circles, they're the latest fashion statement with the youth? God, ‘the youth’, I hate that I just said that." She shakes her head, but Ezekiel knows better than to jump on that train of thought as a distraction. That particular train leads to derailment and potential explosions of an angry Baird variety.

"Seriously, Jones, what's up with you?"

Dilemma. It’s that tone, the one where her eyes soften and she looks so concerned, and not in a "there's a thief in my house quick hide the silverware" sort of way. He doesn’t really know how to handle that. On the other hand, telling her about any of this - any of these new muddled memories that cut like crystal shards into his consciousness in his sleep, but blur upon awakening - isn't going to work. She'll just turn up the dial on this bizarre concern and never let him get a moment's peace, and it'll be weird and awkward and he --- doesn't know how to deal with that. 

But she's cornered him on the way to the fridge. Smart. There's no getting by her without an answer, and he's got half a double cheese pizza in there, with Jake on the prowl for a snack. Time is of the essence. Good thing he's got a decent bluff on hand.

"There's nothing up," he chirps, already fishing for his phone. "I just had a great time at a laser tag place late last night. I got so many selfies, want to see?" 

He pulls up a selfie where he and two random people who'd formed a team with him are covered in neon face paint, wearing the blinking vests, and points it triumphantly at Baird. 

"Of course, you'd know this if you followed me on instagram," he continues, slyly confident that the month-old photo is one she hasn't seen before. She squints at his choice of glowing green cat whiskers, but nods and steps aside from his computer-to-kitchen flight path. 

Of all of them, she's the one who had the most doubts of whether or not he remembered. She'd been flatly unimpressed when he asked if they were joking about him saving the day, and for two weeks after they escaped the alternate world, she'd watched him like a hawk or a bear. Colonel _Bear-d_ , ha. She'd meant well, but her constant scrutiny felt like she was expecting him to crack and confess at any moment, or even just crack into a full-on breakdown. He’d felt pinned under her gaze. A pinned Ezekiel is an uncomfortable one, and an uncomfortable Ezekiel is an overcompensatory one that gets on everyone’s absolute last nerve. 

It’s better for everyone involved that they learn to leave him alone. He’ll be perfectly fine if they let him smother his sorrows in pizza. 

“Jones!”

Aaaaand no such luck. “Yeah?” he asks as he spins on the spot. 

She squares her shoulders. “If you do need to talk about anything… you know you can just say the word.”

His smile doesn’t so much as waver.

“Sure thing, Baird.”

Yeah. Right. Dream on. 

Stick to manageable goals. Best foot forward, his pizza awaits. 

*~*

_Attempt #54_

_If you say a word enough times, it ceases to sound like a word and loses all meaning. Or so they say._

_"Again again again again again again again again again..."_

_Cassandra peers over your shoulder as you mumble over the electrical panel. Baird and Stone are hanging back to watch the hallway, completely pointlessly, but you've grown tired of Jake hanging over your shoulder during this part - **some master thief** \- and told them that the rage people could come from behind. They've been relegated to guarding the hall and discussing futile battle plans you could probably recite by heart ever since. _

_"Um, Ezekiel? What exactly are you doing?"_

_You flash her a quicksilver smile. "Experiment. Right up your street, brain girl, you like science."_

_She perks up at that, honing in on the keywords like an excitable bloodhound. More like a cavalier spaniel, you think distantly, mind still chanting away. It's a drone in your head now, rattling along, echoing a beat, and true to the hype, it feels like less of a real word._

_"What sort of experiment? Also, brain girl, only slightly better than math girl."_

_You wrestle with the appropriate wire and the panel does your bidding. The door slides open and in the distance, you hear the faint thump of formerly-human footsteps. They'll catch up with you in less than four minutes._

_"Doesn't matter," you decide. "Let's go."_

_Four minutes til you choke on blood, rabid fingers tearing into the cartilage of your throat, cutting off your last "again."_

\- 

_Attempt #87_

_The rage people are coming again, Cassandra is scared again, Stone is battling two pipes at once again while Baird has that grim, desperate look again. The facts haven't changed._

_This is going to hurt. Again._

**_"Aaaaaaaaaagh!"_**  
_"Jones! What're you-!"_

_Your flesh sears and blisters, blazing, blinding, but Baird bandages you, again, and you run. Again. Not fast enough, againagainagain._

_Scald, rinse, repeat._

_You **hate** the word "again". _

*~* 

Until now, he's been fine with writing it off. This heroic guy they think was so badass and cool - that wasn't him, that was him in another lifetime, kind of like the whole "Agent Jones" thing. If this other Ezekiel went through a video game and died, then he, the real Ezekiel, has to have been reloaded from the original save point of when they entered. Hard reset, a complete do-over. Pretty straightforward when you think about it. 

Except that doesn't make sense any more. On the first night after he realised he wasn't in fact Agent Jones – MI6 not to be spoken of, at any time, ever – he’d been visited by a confusing haze of dreams with the common setting of a military facility. These dreams are filled with blood and loss and dismemberment, and unlike his usual nightmares, they aren't about a past he remembers. These dreams are of a different _him_ , the ghost of Ezekiel past, erased from existence and supplanted by plain old original flavour Ezekiel. But as they come, it’s like he’s Jaeger-piloting with a dead man, remembering that life as though it happened to _him_ — and they just keep on coming.

They don't even come at once, in order, or with any kind of sense. He sees one round and catches himself thinking _no, that came later, that was after the eighth time they tore me apart_ , sees another and knows it came before. (How does he know that?) Then there are the ones that blur into each other, too similar to distinguish other than by the memory of how _exhausted_ he was in the memory, this alternate him who was supposedly a hero. It certainly doesn't feel too heroic. Then again, maybe you had to have been there.

He wasn’t there. It wasn’t him. _Why_ is it him who has to see this? 

Maybe he's getting a first-person nightly viewing of The Walking Dead: Dead Friends Edition because the other Ezekiel is too dead to remember. He didn't make it to the save point, _whoops,_ data corrupted, reload to the earlier file, yet someone has to pay the price so _he's_ the one stuck with the gore and the guilt and the unending barrage of bloodied corpses, dead Jake dead Cassie dead Eve, everyone always forever dead or dying --- 

Whatever. It sucks. The other Ezekiel got off easy, getting to vanish into the ether like it's no big thing. Like yeah, nice going, just dump all your issues on him, why don't you? Admittedly, he's been shoving his problems aside to be dealt with at some nebulous future stage for... over two decades now, so it had to catch up to him at some point, but still. Not cool. 

Also not cool: how the others are still acting weirdly around him, and how he suspects he’s becoming a liar. 

*~*

He’s in the kitchen, jiggling away at a padlock for something to do with his free hand - who says he can’t multitask while he’s eating pizza? - when Jake ambushes him. He’d hoped that they would have dropped the subject after Baird must have reported back on being rebuffed, but they liked this other him, he thinks. They went all silent when he probed for details in the days after it happened and they realised he wasn't joking about not remembering -- but how could he remember when he never experienced it? It’s still not a lie. And yet here Jake is with that _look_ again, the one that says “you’re worrying me but that fact annoys me so you’re actually annoying me right now by worrying me, for god’s sake Jones get it together and tell me what you’re thinking”. A week’s reprieve aside, he’s seen that look enough since the game to puzzle out exactly what it says. 

It says “spill it now, kid, ‘cause I’m going **nowhere**.” 

Ezekiel likes to think he holds out admirably against it. He gets through three tumblers and two slices of pepperoni before Jacob’s silent looming makes him crack. Christ, the bloke knows how to loom, he’d take the gold in the Oloompics.

“You here for something or just like to see the master at work?” 

“You’ve been acting funny recently.” Straight to the point. He’s been the most direct about this entire affair. Baird has been all softness and knowing looks and Cassandra keeps trying to trap him with conversation into admitting more than he actually knows, but Stone just comes right out and asks. 

It’s surprisingly hard to deal with him like that. Jake doesn’t go for sidesteps and evasions. He likes to try to pin things down, the best way out is always through. 

Pause. ~~Where did that come from >~~ Chew pizza to cover pause. 

The best way out of this conversation is through distraction. “You’re telling me you don’t feel a bit funny, barkeeping professor of every subject under the sun? It’s been like a week, I’m still wrapping my head around having been on the other side of the law.” He flaps a hand dismissively, lockpick swooping close to Jake’s face and making him rear back into the secure ground of annoyance. “What about you, wondering what to do with your free time? Buy a pony to introduce to the chupacabra? I could steal you a motorcycle if you like, just to round out the whole… midlife crisis.” A quick grin, and Jake sputters like a motorcycle engine backfiring. 

“ _Midlife cris_ \- MID life-? Listen, you little-” Jake’s gaze sharpens as he picks up on Ezekiel about to hop down from the countertop. He frowns, cants his head to the side and huffs. “Oh, you thought you got me there. I’m onto you, Jones!”

Ezekiel freezes halfway through pushing off from the surface and drops back down with a thud. Oh god. He’s evolving. This isn’t in the Jacob Stone Interaction Pattern Guidebook. He’s supposed to be distracted, not stepping closer. Ezekiel relaxes against the counter in nonchalance as he’s hemmed in. 

“No idea what you’re on about, mate, just like I’ve no idea why you think I’m acting off.” He considers a senility joke but no, probably too defensive if Jake’s already cottoned onto the distraction thing. Briefly, he wonders if he can outrun Jake even when he’s between Ezekiel and the door. And, given his current distance, the floor. 

“Oh, right, so you make a habit of jumping at loud noises and twitching over your shoulder. You usually come in looking like warmed up death, and your favourite activity is spacing out in the middle of conversations. Uh huh. That’s perfectly normal for you.”

He breaks eye contact and casts about on the worktop, seizing upon a final piece of pizza and cramming it into his mouth. Stupid, now his hands are free, nothing to fiddle with, nothing to distract him. Half hoping not to be heard, he grouses “Why do you even care if I’m off my game?” around a mouthful of crust. Jake understands anyway. Damn him. 

“Because- you’re part of the team! And, _annoying_ as you are, don’t get me wrong, when you’re not acting like this you can be kind of badass sometimes. In ways that the team needs.” 

_Damn_ him. 

_"Kind of badass." "You were a hero."_

He's gone over these lines two dozen times, trying to sound out their shape, trying to make them fit. It hasn't worked; they just don't apply to him. No matter how tempting it would be to think so. 

Oh, but Jacob Stone. The light of the kitchen lamps in his hair, the play of his hands over the counter beside him. The intensity overriding his awkwardness as he tries to help right now. Everything about him deserves a hero and Ezekiel aches with the wish that it could be him. 

(So maybe his problem is less about Stone being direct than it is about being Jake. _Maybe_. The first rule of thieves is to admit nothing.) He stays silent. Jake presses on. 

“I know something’s bothering you. I know you won’t admit it, hell, maybe you just can’t, but. If you do decide to up and share, and you don’t want to talk to the girls about it. I’m open when you do.” 

_Damn him!_

Jake leans in to make his final point. “Like I said, Jones. I’m onto you.” 

Warm breath against his face. Warm eyes locked onto his when he meets them. Warm memory, of not the same but very similar… Ezekiel’s hand flounders blindly at his side, searching for a pen, his lockpicks, any sort of anchor in this moment - 

It finds none of these things. It finds the hot hull of the coffee machine. 

He jerks back violently. Burning. Attempt six, sixteen, thirty six, six hundred, blurring into one sharp bright memory pooled in his palm.

"SHIT! Jones, you all right?"

He's gone. Off the counter, through the door, through the halls, blast past Jenkins and his armful of experiments, into the maze of the deep library.

_“Kind of badass.”_  
_"You were a different you."_

No, he thinks, once his brain has recovered the capacity for real and present thought. That's never been me. He sags against the wall in the cursed objects wing and flexes his hand. It’s entirely superficial, nowhere near as bad as That Godforsaken Pipe From Fucking Hell (Jake had called it that once, nineteen times). Bad enough though. Now he’s going crazy and Jake knows he’s going crazy and does Jake even _want_ to know or does he just want the entertainment value his breath is speeding up and-- 

Maybe he should stay away from Jake for a while. 

*~*

_Attempt #312_

_"Hey, Jones. You said we've gotten further than this before."_

_"Yeah, couple of times." Try two hundred or more. Your count is becoming a little iffy. It scares you more than you want to admit._

_He takes the wrench from you and loosens up a bolt while you hold the second pipe. You don't quite have the arm strength to hold two at once like he does, but you think you're better than nothing. Spare hands. "So how did we get past this then?"_

_Your smile freezes. "Uhh... now you mention it, no, I think this is as far as we've gone."_

_"Jones."_

_Oh, fuck, why does he have to say it like that, with the quiet doggedness rather than the loud bitchiness, now he looks like he actually cares about what you have to say and you_ **_know_** _you can't stand up to that kind of thing. Not from Jake._

_"I pulled the pipe into place. I know, I know, I'm an idiot, right, what kind of moron-"_

_"Wait, what?" He pulls you out of your babbling and misdirection with one appraising look. "You put your hand on a 200 degree pipe to get us out of here?"_

_You shrug. "Hey, can't always have your engineer buddy on hand. With_ **_three_** _hands,” you add. Like a quip will make it all better._

_Jake grabs your hands and starts peering at them like the scorching blisters will appear if he only stares hard enough. You try to laugh it off and take your hands back but Jake's grip on your right hand tightens instinctively. They’re unblemished, insultingly unmarked, a thief's light fingers hands pressed against Jake's work-roughened hands. Jake doesn't seem to mind, only shakes them slightly._

_"You should be more careful, man. Save some of that fight for yourself. Okay?"_

_You look back from your clasped hands to Jake's face, so caring and sincere, and think_ **_no. No, I'd give it all to you, anything, you wouldn't even need to ask-_**

_But he wouldn't ask, you know, so instead you put on your best blinding smile, your conman's face. "Yeah. Okay."_

__

_Jake gives you a look, dubious, warning, and slowly drops your hand. He lets your joined fingers dangle between you before letting go._

_"Be careful," he says again. "I don't believe you."_

*~*

"I don't _believe_ you!" 

Jake likes to consider himself a fairly mellow person, for the most part. He doesn’t ordinarily get worked up at the slightest stimulus – Stone Senior has that part covered and it’s an example Jake quietly strives not to live up to. He has decades of experience in subduing his reactions, playing the part of the dumb oil-rigger, pretending not to feel the anger at thinly veiled digs at his assumed intelligence, because that’s just what he was: Jacob Stone of the Stone Corporation, average son of an average old man. That’s who he had to be, and unless there was a bar fights average men weren’t supposed to have such a wellspring of repressed emotion from which to draw. Average men, according to his father, weren’t supposed to have _any_ emotions, repressed or otherwise. So Jake has had a lot of practice in pretending to be average. 

Ezekiel Jones throws a great big wrench into these efforts. Ezekiel Jones must have some sort of homing device locked onto every single button Jake Stone has, with the ability to push all of these buttons like Jake is a Launchpad and Ezekiel is trying to make him play _Gasolina._

His control is being tested at this very instant, standing in a bar on the far side of the world with the button pusher in question doing his very best impersonation of a table mat. 

“I mean, _Armenia?_ ” Jake continues, righteous indignation in full flow and spurred onwards by the haphazard stack of glasses beside Ezekiel. “You run off, fire up the back door and find a dive bar in Armenia? What the hell, Jones?”

A paper umbrella is tenuously sitting behind Ezekiel’s ear, threatening to fall out as he attempts to burrow his way further into the table’s surface. Jake sort of wants to touch it. That is not helping matters. 

“Shhhhhhh…”

“ _Shh?_ I will not be shushed, not when you’re making trouble for me from _continents away!_ Baird was about to take us on a mission!” 

Admittedly, it was more like Baird wanting to discuss with Jenkins whether they should go in on a potential case that the clippings book had yet to sanction, but still. He can’t go disappearing like this. Baird has judged him a flight risk since they came back into their own world, and Jake can certainly see her point; these days Ezekiel does a lot of flying. From the Annex, off the handle – off the edge of a ledge of doom – to Armenia and the bottom of a bottle. From the soft light of the kitchen and a quiet moment within it that Jake had thought maybe-  
Well. Clearly he’d thought wrong. There are hazards to not pretending, Jake knows that so well, and especially with this sort of honesty, but he’d thought adulthood and a life away from Oklahoma would help with those situations. 

That’s not the priority. Shove that sort of vague hurt firmly into the repression locker, because there are bigger things to deal with and he’s just about yelled himself out. If not for Baird’s personal Ezekiel tracker (alternatively known as “Jones I swear to any god that exists, you disable this GPS one more time and hell mend you!”) they wouldn’t even know where in Armenia he fled to, just like they don’t know where he goes when he disappears inside his head these days.

That he hasn’t yet turned off his tracker is the only encouraging sign he’s given them. Jake privately thinks it’s only a matter of time. 

Ezekiel peels his face off the counter – a slow and sticky process – and squints somewhere slightly to the left of Jake’s face. “Stone? When’dyou gehhere?”

“When did I – oh, I don’t know, sometime after you pocket-dialled me and tried to order a pizza! Have you even been listening?”

Ezekiel’s dopey giggle is a telling hint that he has not been listening. He possibly should have expected this, considering that the aforementioned pizza order had been directed to “Summ’ere in, uh, wassit called… Narnia? Sausage pep’roni for Narnia pls.” 

How in the world he had managed to pronounce it “pls” is a mystery Jake does not want to unravel, right alongside the mystery of how the hell Ezekiel can make his way across the world, argue conspiracy theories about how the Mona Lisa is _totally fake, how can you be so blind-_ (oh, yes, it had taken quite some time for him to work out the mechanics of hanging up) and then still confuse his location for that of a fantasy series. 

In the present, something that sounds like “‘mno’plane” emerges from the soused lump. 

Jake speaks many languages and considers drunk talk one of his two native tongues, and the last part of that sounded weirdly like “I’m not a plane”. The sheer nonsense of it is almost enough to set Jake off again, but he wrestles the instinctive anger down to get to the bottom of this. Something is wrong with Ezekiel lately and this might be an opportunity to find out what it is. Maybe it’ll go better than the last time he tries. 

“Jones,” Jake says, like a sentence all on its own, then “ _Ezekiel._ What are you doing here?”

_What are you doing at all?_

“I,” the little pest announces, “Am getting drunk. Thoroughly. Lots.” He seems pleased with this pronouncement and the order in which it emerged. “It’s s’posed to be helpful, you know! Drown all your problems, you should know about that!”

Jake can handle his temper, he truly can, unless there are extenuating circumstances: misfiled books, mislabeled art, that incident with the painting and the apple. Ezekiel Jones and his fat mouth. 

Art, and Ezekiel Jones. They’re both beautiful. They both rile him up beyond rational belief. 

And just like that, with a snide comment on breath that smells like beer, Mount Stone erupts. 

“This is not funny, Jones! Alcohol doesn’t fix things, it breaks them!” Businesses, homes, hearts, he knows about them all, and the familiarity isn’t something he appreciates. 

Ezekiel tips a glass of something clear and strong at him with a giggle. “Wrong, mate. It’s hilarious, and it _has_ to help.” 

Jake grabs the glass and shoves it to the side of the table before he can neck it, ignoring both the mournful “Nooooooo, stoppit Stone—” this elicits and the earnest plea in his eyes.

“How can you do this?”

Ezekiel squints at him again and shrugs. One shoulder fails to pick up the signal. “M’not doin’ aaaaaanything,” he sings dismissively. 

“You-!” He stills his breath, trying to organise his thoughts. To work out why Ezekiel irritates him so much. It doesn’t take much contemplation; he knows perfectly well why.

It’s his intelligence, and how he misuses it. It’s his potential, and how he squanders it. How he doesn’t even _recognise_ it, waving off encouragement with a flippant _don’t ask me, I’m just the thief_ kind of attitude, or a biting remark about something or other. He can be better, he is so much better, not in the condescending way that Jake’s teachers used to say “If only you’d apply yourself—”, just better in the sense that he’s so full of goodness, yet so stubbornly determined to pretend that he’s not. It aggravates him. 

It aggravates him even further when he realises the hypocrisy of it all. So he channels it into indignation, as usual. 

"You're just gonna abandon us and drink your problems away?” _Abandon_ **_me?_** “I thought we were- you know what, never mind. Did you even get your hand seen to?” Ezekiel isn’t even looking at him. “This isn't a game, Jones!"

That doesn’t produce the anticipated effect. Ezekiel breaks into helpless, hysterical laughter, wilder than Jake has ever seen him, and he slides forward to thunk his head down on the table once more. 

"No," he quietly crows into the dirt streaked wood. "It's not. Woo."

Jake hesitates. He was prepared to come and drag Ezekiel home, Maybe yell a little, sort out his feelings from that incident earlier - hurt, confusion, concern, no seriously is there even a plaster on that hand? Maudlin drunken moodswings, he’s known how to deal with since he was a teenager dragging his dad back from the bars. He always knew what would help back then. This. This is somehow worse. Then Ezekiel is propping himself upright, swiping his final glass back with deceptive speed, and raising it to Jake in a halfhearted toast.

“I’m not playing any more!" he announces, surprisingly clear, then tips the gin down his throat. 

He’s an exception to the rule in this sense too; Jake doesn’t know how to help Ezekiel Jones. 

*~* 

Hangovers. Thumping. Not good. Memories of Jake yelling. Very not good. Cassandra peering right up close in his face. _Very not good._

It’s pissing him off actually. A lot of things are. The bickering between Baird and Jenkins about going on this artefact retrieval, Jake’s expression every time he thinks Ezekiel isn’t watching and sometimes when he clearly is, and now Cassandra up in his face. 

“You don’t look very well, Ezekiel. Are yo-” 

He cuts her off with more bite than is warranted. “The next person to tell me I’m acting funny or ask me if I’m feeling okay is going to lose their wallet, keys and shoes, to be returned only when everybody stops acting like I’m a liability.” 

She steps back, looking hurt. “I was only worried you were getting sick. If you’re coming down with some sort of virus then you need to rest and recuperate, not go running about doing Librarian things.”

“He’s not sick, he’s hungover,” Jake says, arms crossed over his chest. His face is neutral enough to make Ezekiel’s own chest tight, but that’s par for the course these days. “He’s brought this bad mood on himself.”

Baird’s eyebrows, which took up residence near her hairline shortly after he snapped at Cassandra, somehow take on an even more disbelieving tilt. “You were drinking this early? In the middle of the day, while you’re on duty?” 

On duty, right, like they have fucking office hours. He lashes out at her too, fully aware that he’s going nuts and even angrier as a result. “This isn’t prison or the military, Baird! Last I checked the Prohibition was over. Alcohol for all, woohoo.” He didn’t even know his voice could go that sarcastic. 

Baird only comes closer, trying to round the table and approach. “Ezekiel, I let it go earlier, but I need to know what has gotten into you.” Commanding tones that are soothing at the same time, WHY don’t these people know how to properly REACT? “I can’t protect you if you won’t tell me what sort of enemy we’re fighting.” It feels like a ball as big as the Labyrinth's string is knotted near his lungs, high in his chest, burning like he'd set a lighter to the end rather than torn the thing apart --

_#280: "We're stuck in a video game! WHERE IS THE RAGE QUIT OPTION?!"_

_"Ezekiel, you are not making any-"_

" ** _Ezekiel, you are not making any sense!_** _Yes, I get it, okay? Please, just don't!"_

He blinks clear of the visions and hammers the table hard with his flat of his hand, the one not covered in a plaster. He couldn’t make such a loud sound with that one. _“DAMN IT,_ will all you stop prying at me?!” There are stares from all around, his face hot. “Let’s just go and get the bloody thing and be done for the day.” 

Jenkins clears his throat, forgotten until now. “Yes, well, while we do not hit tables upon which rests the gauntlet of Awen and other such fragile things,” he says, pointedly removing the doohickey with dignified care. There’s no pity in his eyes but something even worse. An awful sort of understanding. “The back door is already primed.” 

Head thumping and chest still on fire, Ezekiel takes the out. 

*~* 

It’s a tense mission. Jake is giving him the sort of frosty silence that suggests he’s really cocked something up there, Cassandra can’t seem to decide between concern and whatever the noun form of miffed is, and Baird. Well. Her job might be to watch his back, but there’s certainly no need to take it so literally. He can tell when she’s watching and he doesn’t even know if she’s blinked.

They’re breaking into a private collector’s storage facility. He should be bouncing off the walls in his favourite element. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling but it isn’t excitement.

He doesn’t know what he’s feeling at all. 

He is fairly sure how the others feel at least. He's kind of screwed, since that other him has gone and given them standards and it’s interfering with his show. Now they’ve been reminded that he’s the furthest thing from a hero they could come up with and any disappointment they might feel is entirely on their own heads. And maybe the other Ezekiel who up and died. Convenient, that. 

He breaks open the casing to an electrical panel that he’s making a _stunning_ effort not to think about and ignores Jake’s impatient shifting and snippier than usual commentary. 

“Is this going to take much longer?” 

He doesn’t answer. He might be tempted to do something really stupid and he’s only just wrestled Mount Jones back into dormancy, very aware that the slightest thing today could set off the eruption anew. His silence makes Jake sigh, and under his breath he mutters “Some master thief.” 

Ezekiel’s fingers jerk hard and catch on a wire that definitely should not be caught. Sirens blare that he can’t hear over the rushing in his ears. He doesn’t hear the swearing, the pounding of approaching feet, or even his own as Baird grabs the back of his collar and _yanks_ him along in a dead run. He barely hears the yelling when they’re back in the annex. The questions. He doesn’t feel Baird letting go of him far beyond when she had to. He’s underwater and adrift. Fine, it’s getting a little bit out of hand. 

_Tell Baird,_ he thinks as her hand slips from his shoulder. No. No, no, he can’t, don’t you get it, he _can’t,_ it curdles his stomach with the thought of Baird having an actual _reason_ to worry about him, to think he can’t do his job, to think something’s _wrong_ with him. _Tell Baird?_ It sticks in his throat _every god damned time._

_Tell Baird!_

Don’t tell. She looks at him for a long moment until something unfurls in his chest like shame. She exhales, seeming tired and almost old. “Go home, Jones.” 

So he does. 

*~*

_Attempt #240_

_It's a video game. It's a goddamn fucking video game with zombies and a save point.  
In retrospect, you really should have worked this one out sooner._

_You will never play a video game again._

There’s a thick padded envelope on his doormat when he enters his building. There’s a familiar logo on the packet. He picks it up on his way in, and the second the door closes behind him, he throws it against the wall. _“If we get out of here, I’ll never play a video game again.”_

There had been no less than eighty near-identical oaths, promising to never touch another game if only they could all get out. He remembers Other Him early on thinking that it was a fucking downer, because he'd only just placed an order for _Bloodshock 15_ , and he'd been looking forward to that for months -- or more. It had felt like weeks since he entered the facility, and it actually just might have been. 

Other Him is gone. It’s just _him_ now. It's all on him. His responsibility. His failures. His nightmares. And if this is the cost of respect, of that incomprehensible shift from indulgent _"that's a pity book"_ to awe, and actual pride on Baird's face, then by God he doesn't know why he ever wanted it. He certainly doesn't deserve it. This past day has proven that much if nothing else. Now he’s fucked it all up anyway. 

The anger builds again and boils over. He hurls the envelope like a discus, hears a muffled clatter. In a blink he’s sweeping his entire counter clean, fruitbowl sent flying with a crash and several thumps. A vicious kick send a bar stool clear across the kitchen. He wishes for something else to smash in his minimal apartment, but now he’s in the living area where there’s nothing else to throw, just pillows and sofa cushions and the frustration builds up until there’s nothing he can do, a sick and helpless feeling and his hands clenched near his head and a sound like a scream trying to be a growl. 

He doesn’t even approach his room. What’s the point? What’s the _fucking point_. He sinks into the sofa, feeling so suddenly tired, and lets himself slide sideways. Time slips. He’s still here. Staring vacantly into the air as darkness blooms around him, cocooned by silence. Waiting for the violence of his dreams. 

He should probably admit it now. But he won’t. 

*~*

_Blood running gasping gates cassie crying hot pipes blood private lee the bravest men running screaming dead and dying the others are SAVED-_

He gasps back to life on the sofa, feeling like he just crashed into the cushions from the abyss. The violence is starting to blur in his head like it had when he was about 350 rounds in and unable to count any more. He doesn’t know if he dreamed the details and now forgets them or if his brain just can’t process any more. 

It’s still dark, ish. Probably the early hours of the morning. He could go into the library before the others arrive, get a head start on the day. 

… he’s shaking. Huh. Dimly, he wonders if this is a new development or if he woke up like this. Even more dimly, he wonders why that doesn’t scare him as much as it should, and then he drifts for a while in his head. Trying to sift through its scattered contents and pin down a coherent thought, other than the one doing its best to batter down his barriers of denial.  
He wasn’t asleep yesterday when the flashback hit. It isn’t some sort of- dimensionally transcendent nightmare from a parallel timeline that can access this world only through his subconscious (what, like he’s never watched Doctor Who). That really happened, he felt it happen, felt every single death with his own body and brain. His. 

No. That doesn’t sound like him. It can’t be. 

It can’t. He can’t take it. 

Words play in his mind again, the ones he knows he really did hear. 

_“You finally turn into a half-way decent person, and you're just not gonna admit to it?"_

Well. Seems that Jake, in spite of his many degrees, missed out on a few lessons Ezekiel knows well. There are certain rules for certain professions, different strokes for different folks. Baird's first rule is probably _never leave a man behind_ or some similar military maxim made less cliche by her genuine belief in it. He imagines Jenkins-slash-Sir-Galeas-slash-Galahad has the entirety of _Dragonheart's_ Old Code as his personal code, _a knight is sworn to valour, his heart knows only virtue_ and all that awesome old 90s movie crap. 

The first rule of thieves is to admit _nothing_. Ezekiel Jones is the best thief in the world. Even he can do that sort of maths. 

He’ll get up. Get his shit together. Get back in the game. Say nothing and stop staring into space. 

_Manageable goals._

Eventually. 

*~*

_Attempt #100_

_You don't try on this one. You fall through the door, fall to your knees, giggle hysterically._

_"Oh, wow. We're doomed. We're actually doomed."_

_"The phones are dead - Jones, what are you doing?"_

_"Dying, I guess?"_

_Stone smacks you up the back of the head and tries to pull you up. "Jones, quit messing around!"_

_Let it wash over you, the phones are dead, the annex is gone, the quantum supercomputer collapsed, whatever, who cares. It’s never going to matter. It’s never going to be fixed._

-

_Attempt #291_

_"Hey, Jones, how many times have you played this anyway?"_

_You resist the urge to smack your head with the baseball bat._

_"Is this **really** the time?" _

_Jake shrugs as best as he can while smacking the **rage person's** head with a wrench. "Hey, might die at any moment, right? What're you on, 30, 40?"_

_"Ha!" You swipe the last rage person's face more viciously than you had intended alongside that involuntary snort. "No. It's closer to three hundred by now."_

_"Wow," Stone marvels. "You must really suck at video games."_

_You want to feel anger, in fact do feel the ghost of it flicker in your chest like a fire, but then the damp fog descends and you can't summon so much as a spark. He's right, after all. It's his life you've been playing with and **losing**. You’re Ezekiel Jones and you’re actually losing. _

_"Jones?"_

_His hand lands on your shoulder when you don't answer. "Hey! **Ezekiel!** Don’t space out on me, man."_

_You blink. "Sorry. Guess I'm just not great at being the hero."_

_He gets this funny look about him and shakes his head. Shakes your shoulder a little._

_"Hey. I didn't mean it like anything. Just a joke."_

_You nod, slowly, pretend it didn't mean anything. "No worries, mate." You flash your Ezekiel Jones grin, but he doesn't let go for a good few moments. Then he grabs a wrench and twirls it in his hand._

_"I ever tell you how I learned to use a wrench?"_

-

_Attempt #409_

_When they start hammering on the glass and calling for you to let them out, you laugh breathlessly and slide down the door until you slump on the floor, chuckles turning thick and wobbly._

_"You know, I'm really not feeling up for this. Nahhhh. I could use a break before I go off tripping traps left right and centre."_

_Cassandra pounds the glass above you, but you don't look up to see her. "Ezekiel, this can't be healthy! You're locking your friends in a small room? **Do you not see the problem with this?** " _

_"Okay, I think we all need to take a few moments and calm down before you let us out of here." There's Baird, as usual - collected even in times of strife. This probably counts as strife. "Everyone calm? Jones?"_

_"Jones? You better answer before I become less calm!"_

_"Not helping, Stone!"_

_“Ezekiel!”_

_"Jones!" **Tap tap!** "Say something!"_

_"Have you ever been to Canada?"_

_That shuts them up for a moment, presumably while Cassandra squints down at you in curiosity and Jake mulls over all the ways he wants to strangle you before he decides which way to list first._

_"I went there when I left home. It's nice. Bit of a climate shocker, but hey, I can roll with it. Gotta say though, I probably could've picked a better time than mid-winter to go. **Brr.** I made a snowman. Well, it was more of a snowlump, but I give myself bonus points since it was the first time I ever actually saw snow." You pause, thinking back. "Colder than I expected." _

_"... Ezekiel? Are you okay?"_

_"Ha. Ha. Yeah. No. Not really. Let's not talk about that. Let's talk about snowmen. Or Canada. Or Australia, even, how about that? Just anything but this stupid game, please."_

_You tell them about making a snow fort taller than you were at fifteen. You tell them why you were alone in Toronto when you were fifteen and you tell them how you got there after miles and miles of truck stops and lonely roads._

_You sit and talk and you stave off reality (or false reality) until you can't justify this selfishness any longer. You don’t tell them that when you first saw snow you almost lost your fingers to the numbness that crept in while you played. When you dived back inside the contrast had made them burn, like fingers on a metal pipe, until you almost wished you’d never left if it hurt that much when you went back in._

-

_Attempt #500_

_"Nope."_

_They're baffled when you start scratching a line onto the floor with the crowbar. Baird is trying to call Jenkins, Cassandra is contemplating quantum computing. Surprise surprise, what a turn-up for the books, you’d **never have guessed** they’d do that. Without the crowbar to pick up, Stone is free to stare at you like you've lost your mind. _

_"Jones, what the hell are you doing?" he demands in the Pissy Voice._

_Ahahaha. It's funny that he thinks he scares you, after you've seen him swearing filthily in French over dropping a wrench on his toe, seen him caught up in rambling about how ancient Nordic couples proposed to each other, seen him sharing stories about his childhood with Stone Senior._

_Seen him with his throat gouged open by rage-people-fingers **how many times.** _

_You keep drawing, hearing the floor screeeeeeeeeeeech in complaint – god, **same** – until they're standing within a massive circle, ignoring them all when they ask for explanations. Then you turn to face them._

_"Can we just - not?"_

_And you plop down to the floor._

_Maybe they see something in your face, maybe they just don't know where to start. Maybe they think you've finally lost your mind. (Wait, did you have that thought already? Maybe they'd be right. Hah. Haha.) Either way, once Cassandra kneels by you they slowly settle down in the circle too. It's kind of nice, almost like the happy people you've seen sitting together in the grass on sunny days, just without the grass or sun or blessed day's end. You would actually kill someone if it would let you sit with the others in the grass on a sunny day right now._

_Not one of **these** someones though. Hell fucking no. Rage-people-someone, yeah. Bad-people-someone, maybe. You don’t really want to think about what you would do to get out of here. Best try to relax. _

_But there is no pause button and they want answers. The breath gusts out of you in a mournful whoosh, and you break the silent tableau._

_"We're in a video game. It keeps resetting, I was first through so I'm the player, you're my escort mission. You keep forgetting everything we do. The DARPA people are these - rage people, really, they keep killing us and then we reset. But it won't start until we trigger it by going over there."_

_You gesture over your shoulder, vague and somewhat limp._

_"So. This is the safe circle. We're not moving from it yet, Stone, **get away from that edge**. I just-" your voice cracks. Shit. "Need a break. For a little while. Okay?"_

_Stone and Cassandra exchange glances. Baird looks straight at you._

_"A video game?"_

_You nod. "Yeah. I get you out of here, I swear, I will **never** play one again."_

_"And it resets when one of us dies?" Cassandra checks, hands flying about in movements you could probably replicate exactly by now as she corroborates your story._

_You flop onto your back until you can't see her. "Uh-huh."_

_"Jones. How many times have you been through?"_

_You don't answer. Staaaaaaaaaaaaaare at the ceiling and let it all rush through you, every loop and death and minor victory and story shared. The temporary reprieve that this offers, these few minutes of safety like a boulder removed from your stomach._

_"I dunno."_

_Liar, liar, pants on fire._

_You hear Eve's Concerned Voice, the one she gives you when she thinks of you as a damaged soldier or something else you can't quite work out, even after all this time. You would look up to see the accompanying face but you're just. So tired. So no, you don't._

_"Cassandra, Stone, why don't you check this place out for a minute?"_

_You bolt upright and the panic rips out of your throat._

_"DON'T! Don't - leave, the circle, please, just don't, the rage people will get you if you leave and it never works, it just **never works** , just don't! **Please!"** _

_Jake's already gone, Cassandra half in and half out of the stupid pointless fucking safety circle nobody respected, Eve's giving you the next level of concern that you have no frame of reference for but thinks might be almost veering on motherly, and **fuck**. _

_The crowbar's still in your own hand._

_"Hey, guys, there's a-AAAAAAAAAARGH!"_

_Reset._

-

_Attempt #501_

_The stupid safety circle is gone. It was never there._

*~* 

The phone is ringing. Not a tripped alarm or blaring klaxon, the phone. What time is it? ~~What day is it?~~ He doesn’t know how he can be this tired and have slept for so long. How much of that was sleep anyway? Did he go back to sleep? 

Oh. Right. Ringing. Ringing phones need to be answered. Yes. Focus. He blinks away the cloud in his mind. 

Too late, it’s on voicemail. Cassandra. 

_“Hey, Ezekiel. We’re all at the annex, we’re going to plan out a different approach to getting the artefact after yesterday. We could really do with your help. … I hope you’re feeling better today.”_

There’s probably a reproach in there that he’ll feel terrible about once the part of his brain labelled “feelings” decides to come back online. For now though, he’s going back to the library. 

He comes in the front door. Jenkins is running a scourer over that Owen gauntlet and doing his best to ignore Stone and Cassie flitting around the clippings book in full discussion planning mode. He blinks and Cassie's hair is red with blood, Baird's eyes are empty sockets but her limbs still twitch, alive, _reset quick **please** reset._

The price of salvation: this crushing guilt, his bloodstained hands and nights, phantom gouges in his flesh. 

Suck in a breath. He's still alive. Take stock of the room. They're still alive. Even Jenkins is alive, and he's, what, over nine thousand? He never really learned much about Arthurian legends, god knows when Arthur and the knightly squad was kicking about. Never came up in his chats with Jake, turns out he’s more of a classical mythology guy when it comes to it. Don’t think about that either. 

He’s gotten away with it. None of them have notice his entrance or that dizzying moment of fear and short-changed breath. Maybe if he just slips out-- 

There’s a hand on his shoulder. Terrifyingly powerful grip. 

“Let’s talk, Jones.” 

*~*

Neutral ground. A little used reading room, because why wouldn’t the library have one, with nice comforting couches and rounded walls like a Hobbit hole. It’s nice, cosy. 

If it got him out of this conversation, Ezekiel would trade it for the rage people in a heartbeat. 

~~LIAR don’t even JOKE about that.~~

Really though. It’s about as comfortable as a confrontation can get and still there’s a knot in his throat and he’s ready to bolt at the first chance he gets. Pinned down like this, trapped in one room with one exit, oh she’s good. 

_Attempt #241_

_You really should have thought of locking them in a room sooner, too. They hate it, they curse and complain, but they fall silent when you crack yourself open and let them see the jagged insides. Splinters of emotion beneath a splitting facade, revealing depths of despair and desperate love. Like a geode. God. You’re fucked._

He should be raging still. Who gave them the right? Who gave them the right to demand answers from him, to smash him open and gawk at his sparkly innards? The Ezekiel they wanted so much to see is a fucking disaster just like any other version of him. He - this _other_ Ezekiel, the different him the mature commanding badass hero - is a goddamn fucking mess. Will they be satisfied with that? 

“I’m sorry.” 

What? 

Baird continues in the face of his uncomprehending stare. “I’ve been in the military my whole life. I know a lot of good people who came back different, through no fault of their own, and I know what the signs look like when they’re heading that way. Or going into a bad spell. Flashbacks, bad memories, dissociation. Hell, I’ve done it a few times myself,” she admits. “I shouldn’t have told you to leave last night.” 

His stomach is cold and he has to go home right now immediately. He left the stove on. And the iron. And the kettle. The babysitter hasn’t come for his cat. He’s getting out of here now, before she breaks him. But she catches his arm before he can do more than twitch. 

“All right,” she says. “I know you don’t want to hear it, but, Ezekiel, _I am worried about you._ I’ve seen things a lot like this, in a lot of people, and doesn’t get better without help. I shouldn’t have left you alone after yesterday. But I don’t know how to help you like this. I need you to tell me what you want me to do.” 

He doesn’t know what he wants. “I want to be left alone.” 

She just keeps looking at him, worse than telling the story. Seeing right through him with no effort whatsoever. “Thought you didn’t lie, Ezekiel Jones.” 

“I admit nothing.” 

Okay. Think quick, Jones, how would pre-DARPA Ezekiel get out of this? A sarcastic quip and a breezy exit, probably, and he's close to fulfilling it, can taste the syllables of a true zinger lingering on his tongue, and - stops. Bites down on the insult and waits for Baird to talk instead. Why bother? People fill silences. It's what they do, and if the chatty one stops then another will pick up the slack just to stop the silence. Baird can prod at him for a while then leave him alone, satisfied that she's done her bit to stop Ezekiel from being a moody bastard. No silence. No expectations other than agreement. No problem. 

"Jones?"

That's not yelling. Ezekiel doesn't remember having to make such an effort to drag his conscious back down to earth in his life. Where did his thoughts go? They've scattered like clouds. The knotted ball in his chest twists looser, tentatively probing at a slackened end. It's still there, hot and tight and rage for no reason, but it must be strangling his voice right now because he feels a distinct lump in his throat. 

" _Ezekiel_. Please. Talk to me." 

His face is hot and his eyes burn and he doesn't know what expression he has on, which should concern him. Image is everything, don't you know, and a happy image means no questions asked. 

She’s asking. She wants him to admit what he hasn’t to himself. She’s doing the face, again, the one that used to be alien but is achingly familiar because god he must have seen it now a thousand times. She’ll understand even though words fail. 

It’s Eve asking. 

“It,” he tries. Chokes on the word. Gasps in a breath and tries not to hold it in his throat with the rest of his words. He can’t. Eve’s hands on his shoulders draw him in and he feels young and stupidly scared. She pulls him closer, narrowing his scope so he can breathe a fraction more easily as the world contracts. “It’s okay, Ezekiel.” 

“It was me,” he rushes, breath wheezing out all at once. “I did it, I died, you died, I _remember-”_ he chokes again, gulping in air that barely reaches his lungs, feeling her pull him in for a reassuringly crushing hug. He clings like a panicked barnacle to a beached rock in a storm. 

He’s not stupid, you know. He knows Jake and Cassandra are hovering by the door. He gives himself a few seconds. Seven, more or less, then a quick nod against Eve’s shoulder and they’re beside him as he pulls away, rearranging his face into something less resembling pathetic. No tears, just an inability to properly breathe and stop his face from _wobbling._

“I don’t want your pity,” he manages after a while. Cassandra makes a strangled sound and hits him in the chest. 

“You can be such an _idiot_ , Ezekiel Jones!” 

And somehow that’s enough for the basics to come out. The basic basics, at any rate. Halting, stumbling over how he hadn’t really lied, not knowingly, and how he remembers everything up to that final loop and then nothingness until the saved players salvaged him. It’s far from everything they want to know, and far more than he ever wanted to say. For now it’s enough. 

Except for this: 

When Cassandra and Eve finally leave, Jake loiters. They don’t speak, just gauge each other until the air is heavy around them. Ezekiel feels too raw to make the first move, like someone came at him with a cheese grater, which is a strange sort of comparison to make but then again he’s not really at optimum facilities at the moment. Ever the fixer, Jake speaks first. 

“Is this why you ran away?” Like the words are ripped out of him, and Ezekiel definitely knows how that feels. 

He shrugs, stiff and more embarrassed than he’s been in a good while. “Like you said, Cowboy. You were onto me.” 

Then again, there hasn’t been a situation like this in more than a good while. It’s quiet and uncertain between them. Ezekiel knows the light of a burned bridge when he sees it. But maybe, if he’s really lucky, this one is still only smouldering. 

“I don’t remember all of them. I lost count of how many times we went through. Escort missions, you know,” he tries for another shrug, making it casual, thinking of buoyant delight and _we’re in a VIDEO GAME?!_ . Like _Oh, you know how these things go._ “I tried everything. I tried going through with one at a time, or none of you. You showed me how to bleed a pipe.”

“And told you who first showed me,” Jake murmurs.

“Right.” Ezekiel swallows. “We did a lot of talking. There was this one loop though -” 

One that had unbalanced him for the next loop’s entirety, but god, so worth it. If he’d won right then he would have thought the whole game worth it. 

“-I thought it was a dream when I remembered. Well. Thought they were all dreams, at first, but this one. Way too unrealistic to be anything but.” He shakes his head. Don’t let the fog get to him this time. This is _important_. 

“Oh yeah?” He’s interested, Ezekiel can tell. “What happened?”

“You were telling me a story. Trojans or Spartans, it’s all Greek to me, I don’t remember the details because before we moved on. You gave me a kiss.” 

Jake shifts, but - damn him - he can do inscrutable almost as well as the looming no matter how many loops they’ve shared, and now it’s just a matter of faith. Hope. He ploughs ahead. 

“See, while _you_ aren’t _him_ , I’ve very recently had to come terms with how _he_ is actually me. Which means, in the interests of honesty,” he steps closer, mirroring that morning in the kitchen. Just far enough away that Jake can back out if he wants. He’ll drop it, never bring up the matter or this potential thing again, but he has to make this one final try. 

“I ought to give it back, Cowboy.”

Jake’s lips tip up, considering, and -- 

“Well then, thief,” he breathes, bridging the gap at last. “Better pay up.” 

Smouldering. And _alive._

*~* 

_(some undefinable time later)_

“I knew you weren’t at laser tag.”

“What?”

Baird folds her arms across her chest. “That photo. You took it a long time before you showed it to me. Obvious giveaway that you had something to hide.” 

He’s getting the impression that it wasn’t the only obvious giveaway, but he appreciates being allowed to keep some of his illusions intact. 

“How do you know that?”

“Jones. You posted it on Instagram a month ago.”

“You follow me on Instagram?!”

“No, I don’t have an account.” 

He droops a little. Of course she doesn’t. But then how did she-? 

“I get Jenkins to show me. He’s quite the fan.”

“No way.”

She grins, a real actual Ezekiel Jones sort of grin. “Yes way.”

Scratch everything. This is the greatest day of his life.


End file.
